Saturday, May 04, 2013

Thornbury demo morning

Thursday morning I was booked to give a demonstration in oils to a local art group in Thornbury, near Bristol. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the journey there was fairly pleasant (I avoided the motorway mayhem by going on the B roads), despite a slight deviation in route through the town centre.  The meeting was in a lovely hall and I had about 16 people come to watch. There were apologies that many of the group were on holiday and so their numbers were a little low.

I took a partially painted piece of a male lion portrait as I was showing how I painted fur with oils and a male lion is perfect for a long and short fur demo. After a brief introduction I got on with painting and I was assisted by a pre-school group singing and playing in the room next door. The singing didn't bother me, it was quite amusing and I found myself several times starting to react with a little bop in my chair!

I started with the long fur showing how I paint wet into wet with liquin and a rigger brush. Then we had a short tea break and after I did some short fur, showing the slight difference in how I apply the paint with a less thin mix of liquin and different brush and brush strokes.

They were a friendly group and thankfully were happy to ask questions as I painted, which makes it more interesting, I am sure for them as it certainly makes it more interesting for me as I never know what the next question might be.

We finished about midday and I left glowing from the positive feedback and general friendly atmosphere of the group.

I had some paintings that I needed to deliver to Nature In Art that day also so I left Thornbury and headed north up the A38 to wards Gloucester. I stopped at Slimbridge WWT on the way as I wanted to see the exhibition that is currently on there. A fellow wildlife artist that I know, Paul Apps, is one of the artists exhibiting and it is a long time since I have seen his work, so it seemed a great opportunity to pop in and view it. It was lovely to wander round and see all his paintings, I especially liked two pieces one called 'Two Guineas' and the other 'Tufted Duck - Wake'. But I couldn't linger long as I had to have a spot of lunch before heading on up to Twigworth just north of Gloucester to the Nature In Art Museum and Art Gallery.

Here I dropped off four pieces of work (three oil paintings and a batik) that were being collected the next day by the owner of Kunstgalerie Oog voor Natuur a wildlife art gallery in the Netherlands. They will exhibit these four paintings for a while.

I stopped to have a look around, as I don't get up to this wonderful place as often as I used to, and enjoyed a lovely mug of hot water with lemon and a generous chunk of delicious lemon drizzle cake in the coffee shop.

What a fab day that was... immersed in gorgeous weather and arty stuff for the day. If only they could all be like that, eh?

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